Welcome to our Italy places to stay, things to do, places to eat and wines to drink pages. We recently returned from our honeymoon in Italy and will be using this page as a journal of our activities. We hope that others will find them helpful and useful for planning and augmenting their travels in Italy, mostly in Tuscany. I am still trying to figure out the best way for me to organize these pages, posts and photos, but we will get that straightened out soon enough.

Here are the areas I cover (will be covering) on these pages:

• Montepulciano
• Montalcino
• Rome
• Florence
• Assisi
• Cortona
• Chianti
• San Gusme

On our first visit to Rome, Tuscany and Chianti together, Danielle and I met with some of her parents’ good friends, Sterling and Linda Lanier and Bud and Joan Ferrari (no, I don’t think they are closely related to Enzo), who gave us loads of advice, books, maps, personal travel journals a full stomach and some great wine. We want to thank them for their great advice and guidance for our big trip. One of their best pieces of advice was to use the Karen Brown Tuscany and Umbria books to find hotels that we would like to stay in.

I ended up contacting Karen Brown’s, in-house, travel agency and using their “Italy Specialist” Liz Bottino. Liz was great at suggesting and facilitating the reservations with the hotels and AutoEurope for the car rental (more on that later). Karen Brown Travel charges $500 up front to arrange your trip, at least that is what they charged me, and for our honeymoon and my first trip to Italy, it was well worth the money. If you don’t speak Italian, have never been to Italy or don’t have much time to plan a trip to Tuscany / Chianti, then Liz is a great resource. If you want to contact Liz, let me know, I have to get a hold of her and ask her if it is ok to publish her info here…until, I do so, I will just pass along your inquiry (my address is jason at this domain name).

Liz arranged for us to stay in three hotels for our trip: 3 nights in Rome at the Hotel Piranesi, 5 nights at the Villa Poggiano in Montepulciano and 5 nights at the Villa Arceno just outside of San Gusme. Oh, and I almost forgot there was a fourth hotel, but it really doesn’t count…the Airport Hilton Rome, where we spent our last night in Italy. I shouldn’t say it doesn’t count, they have a free shuttle into town every two hours and it is litterally inside the airport (but, no plane noise somehow) and directly across the street from where you return your rental car. This is the hot ticket for no-hassle traveling out of Rome. I will talk more about each of these hotels on the detail pages for each of the different towns and cities, but I will say here that I would highly recommend all of the hotels (the Hilton for your last night in Rome). Each hotel offered very personal service, including the Hotel Piranesi in Rome, which offered a beautiful room and hotel right in the heart of Rome next to the Piazza del Popolo (right where I think you want to be). The Tuscan hotels were simply amazing and while they are run by their respective owners (who you interact with on a daily basis), they offer just about every amenity you can think of (and some you can’t) in the rural Tuscan countryside. Simply awesome.

I had to put this picture up here as it is one of my favorites from our trip. Danielle made me stop to take a picture of the beautiful Basilica San Biagio one night on our way into Montepulciano for dinner. The Basilica is located just below the town walls of Montepulciano and this is how it looked every night we were in Montepulciano…simply amazing. I keep telling people that each night we would look outside of the window in the car, hotel or restaurant and think that the view had to be fake. The Tuscan countryside is so beautiful. It is no wonder that there is such incredible art that comes from this region of the world, it is truly inspiring (not to sound completely corny, but it is true).